


some solace at your door

by vices_and_virtues



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, they're good boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 21:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18764494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vices_and_virtues/pseuds/vices_and_virtues
Summary: Jon frowns like he doesn’t understand the question. Honestly, he looks even more fucked up than he’d sounded over the phone, and Theon makes a mental note to lecture him—and Robb too, while he’s at it—on drinking responsibly. “Hey, no more of that,” he says firmly when Jon tries to put his head in his hands again. “Come on, can you stand, at least?”Or; Theon has better things to do than tend to Jon when he's drunk out of his mind. If he were a worse person, he'd probably be doing them.





	some solace at your door

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching GoT a week ago today. And already I'm taken by the Jon/Robb/Theon dynamic. I'm always a slut for quasi-sibling relationships.
> 
> I have kind of a whole modern/university universe going on in my head. For the purposes of this fic, Jon and Robb are first year students and Theon's a year or two older.
> 
> Beta'd by my beloved [rhaella](https://rhaella.tumblr.com/). Title is from Warmth, by Bastille.

It’s Friday night, Thor’s just gotten his hair shorn clean off on the TV, and Theon’s finally getting his first kiss from Ros. Or at least, the first one he’s actually going to remember in the morning. It’s actually the first Friday he’s spent inside in a while, and it’s surprisingly nice. As usual, he’s got the apartment to himself. Ramsay’s gone to spend the weekend and his father’s money on hookers and blow like he always did, the psychopath.

Of course, Theon should have figured everything was going far too well for it to stay that way.

Ros is just pushing her hands up his shirt when his phone rings. Without stopping, he silences it. It rings again. Ros pulls away, an eyebrow raised. “Got another hot date lined up?”

“Just ignore it,” he says, tucking his phone into his back pocket and leaning in for another kiss. Ten seconds later, it starts to buzz, insistently.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Ros reaches around back into his pocket and plucks his phone out. “It’s someone named Snow.”

 _“Ignore— ”_ Ros answers the call.

“Looking for Theon?” she asks, a smirk on her face as she stares him down. “Sure, honey, here you go. Real sorry to keep you waiting.”

She holds the phone out. Theon would really rather just hang up, but that’ll probably make him look like a massive piece of shit. So he takes it.

“It better be important.”

“Sorry.” The word is slurred, sloppy, and Theon frowns. “I’g’lost. Think I’m near your flat.”

“Don’t play at that. If you’re near my flat, you know how to get to your dorm.”

Jon’s silent for a moment, like he’s thinking hard. “I dunno, ‘ve never been here before.”

“Fuck’s sake, Jon, how much have you had to drink? Can you even walk in a straight line?”

“...’m sitting down.”

Ros, who has her ear pressed to the other side of the phone, snorts quietly. Theon shakes his head. “Where are your mates?”

“Dunno… ‘m I bothering you?”

 _Yes, thanks for noticing, goodbye,_ is at the tip of his tongue, but Jon sounds absolutely _pitiful,_ and unfortunately, he’s not totally heartless. “Doesn’t matter now,” he says instead. “Where are you?”

Jon goes silent again. “Think it’s called Jake’s,” he says after a moment, sounding uncertain. “There’re tables outside.”

“Okay, stay put, you hear me? Don’t move, I’ll be right there.” He waits only long enough for Jon to make some sort of noise of confirmation before he hangs up the phone, fighting the urge to fling it at the wall. “Fucking _freshmen.”_

Ros is still leaning against him. “I didn’t know you had a little brother.”

“A whole pack of them,” he says without thinking, then doesn’t bother correcting himself because he doesn’t feel like getting into the history of it. He stands, offering a hand to her. “This one’s usually the responsible one, so I’d better make sure he’s okay. But I’ll be right back, I swear.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I mean it, you just stay right here.” Walking backwards, he grabs his keys and wallet from the side table and stuffs them into his pocket. “I’ll call him a cab or a friend or something to take him back to campus, I shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes, okay? Just sit and enjoy the movie.”

She shrugs, and sinks back down onto the couch. “If you insist.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he promises, then closes the door behind him.

* * *

 

There aren’t any bars near Theon’s apartment called Jake’s that he knows of, but there is a _Hank’s_ , with a big pavilion right outside only a block down that was pretty popular among students. Theon starts there.

On his way over he tries calling Robb, just in case he’ll need reinforcements, but the phone goes straight to voicemail and he doesn’t try again.

It’s Friday night, so of course there’s a swirling thong of drunkards he’s got to fight his way through. Thankfully, though, as he approaches the bar most of that mess is confined to the pavilion, and Theon easily spots the figure sitting on the curb, dressed all in black with their arms wrapped around their legs and forehead pressed to their knees. Theon goes over and claps him gently on the back.

“Hey,” he says, when Jon looks up at him with bloodshot eyes. “Come on, let’s go. You want me to take you back to your dorm?”

Jon frowns like he doesn’t understand the question. Honestly, he looks even more fucked up than he’d sounded over the phone, and Theon makes a mental note to lecture him—and Robb too, while he’s at it—on drinking responsibly.

“Hey, no more of that,” Theon says firmly when Jon tries to put his head in his hands again. “Come on, can you stand, at least?”

Very slowly, Jon gets to his feet, swaying only slightly. _Okay, great,_ he thinks _, so if I can just make sure he can take three steps without falling over I can stuff him into a cab and get right back—_

Then Jon keels over and vomits into the street.

_Shit._

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s okay.” Theon holds him steady as he throws up again, even pushing his hair back out of his face; seems once he’s gotten started, he can’t stop. A few people are shooting them dirty looks, and Theon scowls right back at them. _What? Like this has never been you._

Once Theon’s sure Jon’s gotten rid of the gallons of alcohol that have surely been sloshing around in his stomach for who knows how long, he drags him a decent distance from his vomit puddle and sits him right back down, before pushing his way through the crowd and inside the bar. He manages to get a paper cup of water from the bartender and some napkins from a table, and brings them back outside to Jon.

Jon wipes his mouth with the napkins and guzzles down most of the water—“Spit it _out_ first, gods”—and finally starts to look a little more focused, though he’s still far from any state Theon would be comfortable leaving him alone in. He also looks absolutely miserable, and Theon _really_ wishes he were a worse person than he is.

He reaches out and wraps a secure arm around his shoulders. “Come on, big guy,” he says, helping Jon to his feet. “It’s only a block down.”

It had taken Theon less than five minutes to get to the bar. Now, with Jon in tow, it’s nearly fifteen minutes before he’s pushing open his front door and stepping inside.

(Ros is gone, which is disappointing but no real surprise. Even if he’d been there and back like he’d promised, he really can’t say with absolute certainty he would have expected her to be there when he returned. Oh well.)

“Come on, just a few more steps.” By now, Jon’s coordination is so shot that Theon’s bearing most of his weight. He’d never pegged him as such a sloppy drunk. They only stop in the bathroom just long enough for Theon to make him gargle some mouthwash (he doesn’t have an extra toothbrush, unfortunately for him) and let him wipe his face with a hot towel. Theon doesn’t even let him sit down, because he’s pretty sure if he does, he won’t get back up.

Once they’re in his room, he lets Jon collapse onto his bed before grabbing him by the ankles, properly straightening him out, and unlacing his boots, letting them clunk to the floor and kicking them under the bed. Next, he goes to take off his jeans, but before he can make contact, Jon’s hands fly to his crotch, blocking him.

“Okay, so while that is normally a very good instinct to have,” Theon says drily, “if you sleep in those, you’ll wake up without balls. Just let me do it.”

Jon shakes his head, fumbling with the button, and Theon rolls his eyes.

“How much did you have to drink, anyway?” he asks, finally turning away to grab some sweatpants or something for him to sleep in. “It’s not even midnight.”

Jon’s managed to pop open the button and is now forcing his jeans down his thighs. “Some beer.” He’s not as slurred as he was over the phone, but he still doesn’t sound like Jon. “A couple shots, I guess.”

“A couple is two.” Tired of watching him struggle, Theon grabs the ankles and pulls. Why the fuck anyone would wear pants so tight is beyond him. “Are you sure you mean a couple?”

“...maybe more. Stop, I can do it.”

“Well, I can do it _faster.”_   To prove his point, he tosses Jon’s jeans to the floor and helps him into the sweats. “You go out alone?”

“I lost my mates. We were bar crawling. I had to take a piss.”

 _Rookie mistake._ “You couldn’t go after them? Call someone?”

“Didn’t wanna.”

“Why not?”

Jon rolls over. “If I wanted to play 20 Questions, I’d’ve called Robb.”

“Yeah, I wish you would’ve. I had a good thing going over here.” It comes out sounding harsher than he’d meant for it to. Jon blinks, and his whole face changes.

“Why do you hate me?”

Theon, who’d moved on to digging in the basket he uses as a bedside table for the aspirin he knows he keeps in there, looks up. “What? I don’t hate you.”

“You do.” Jon’s voice is startlingly clear all of a sudden. “You’ve hated me since we were little. I never did anything to you but you hated me anyway.”

Jon’s just staring at him now, eyes bloodshot and mouth pulled into a miserable frown. He looks so unlike himself that Theon tells himself it’s the alcohol talking, but he knows that’s not true. But that doesn’t matter anyway, because he _doesn’t_ hate Jon.

It’s just… complicated.

“Look,” he says. “Just go to sleep, okay? We can talk about it in the morning.”

Jon takes a shuddering breath, and for a moment Theon’s real and truly afraid he is going to cry, which would _suck_. “Okay,” he agrees. He suddenly sounds very tired, and closes his eyes. “In the morning.”

* * *

 

Jon’s been asleep for maybe half an hour or so when his phone buzzes from beneath his jeans. Theon, who’d been watching a movie on his laptop with only one earbud in, figures it’s one of his buddies finally realizing he’s missing. He fishes it out and goes out into the hallway to answer, closing the door securely behind him.

The caller ID tells him someone named Sam is calling, and if Theon’s remembering correctly, he’s pretty sure that’s Jon’s roommate. “Hello?”

Sam sucks in a sharp breath. He must pull the phone away from his ear or cover the mouthpiece or something, because his voice is muffled—not to mention panicked—when he hisses, “It’s not him! Shit, what if something’s happened to him?”

There’s considerable commotion on the other line at that, but Theon really doesn’t have time for conspiracy theorists, or worse, drunk freshmen with overactive imaginations. He just listens to them work themselves up for another thirty seconds or so before Sam remembers he’s on the line. He’s clearly trying to sound brave and _sober_ when he says, voice wavering, “What do you want?”

“Jon’s fine,” he snaps. “It’s Theon, I know you don’t know me but—”

“He’s with his brother!” Sam calls to his mates, having taken the phone from his ear again. That brings a collective cheer, and Theon frowns. “Oh, I am so sorry—”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Theon cuts him off. “You were pub crawling, Jon left to take a leak, and no one thought to do a head count till you were all back home. That right?”

“...we’re really very sorry.”

“I’ll send him back over in the morning. He’s sleeping now. The lot of you should be too.”

“Oh! We should, shouldn’t we? Thank you so much, we really—” Theon hangs up the phone and goes back to his room.

Jon’s still sleeping like the dead. Theon goes back to his corner, wraps himself up in his spare blanket, and resumes his movie.

He doesn’t know when he manages to fall asleep, only that hours later something startles him awake. The light in the room is very faint, he notes, so they’d slept through most of the night with no incident. He’d slumped farther and farther down the wall in that time, and now pushes himself up, letting his eyes adjust.

It’s Jon that had woken him. Theon watches as he carefully crawls to the foot of the bed before slowly, slowly getting to his feet and just standing like that for a few seconds, like he’s trying to gauge his balance. Theon is very familiar with that stance.

“If you going to take a leak,” he says into the darkness, “sit down. I’m not cleaning up your piss.”

Jon nods without turning around, and carefully makes his way out of the room. Theon listens for any thumps or shattering, but Jon seems to make it to the bathroom just fine. He’s gone a long time though, and Theon’s about to get up and go check on him when he hears the toilet flush. A minute later, Jon’s carefully picking his way back into the room.

“Hey,” Theon asks anyway, “did you ralph again? Be honest.”

Jon climbs back into bed and shakes his head no, wrapping himself once again in the blankets. Theon crawls to his side. “Well, do you feel any better?” Jon makes a whiny groaning noise. “Oh, come off it. Use your words.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Still dizzy.”

Okay, so he’s not slurring anymore, which means he’s officially in the early stages of a hangover. “Here, I forgot to give you aspirin earlier anyway. And drink some more water, your breath probably smells like nuclear waste.”

That last part slips out before he can help it, and he cringes. But Jon doesn’t seem to react at all, though it’s really too dark for Theon to see his face. He sits up as much as he can manage, takes the aspirin and water bottle Theon’s offering him and sucks the rest of it down, and burrows back beneath the covers.

Theon can’t see his eyes, but he can tell he’s watching him. He returns to his corner and stares right back.

“Were you sleeping on the floor?” Jon finally asks.

“Line of sight. Had to make sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit.”

“Doesn’t your back hurt?”

“It’s fine.”

Jon’s still staring at him. “I’m not gonna throw up.”

“You might.”

“I’m not. Theon, come on.”

Jon’s voice is insistent, like he just won’t be able sleep knowing someone’s on the floor just a few feet away. Theon heaves a long suffering sigh and gets to his feet.

“If you insist,” he says lazily, rounding the bed and getting in on the other side. “You better not, though.”

“I won’t,” Jon promises, rolling over to face him.

They don’t say anything else. Jon falls asleep first, his breathing deep and even after just a few minutes, and Theon just watches, as long as he can, until he falls asleep too.

* * *

 

The next time he wakes up, the light in the room is bright and someone is banging on his front door.

After a quick glance at Jon (he’d yanked the blanket over his head at some point in an effort to shut out the light), he rolls out of bed and tears down the hall, ripping open the door already saying, “For fuck’s sake, Bolton, some of us are trying—”

It’s not Ramsay at the door. It’s Robb, carrying a backpack and smiling, despite looking like he hasn’t slept a wink all night.

“Hey,” he says, pushing his way in. “Sam told me Jon was here.”

“Uh, yeah.” Theon closes the door behind him. “And where’ve you been? I could’ve used your help.”

“Library.” Robb swings his backpack off his shoulder and onto the dining table with enough force to break it. “I’ve got a paper due Monday morning.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“And now I don’t have to worry about it.” Robb’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but that’s probably more to do with the dark bags that have taken residence there. “Do you want tea?”

Theon watches, slack-jawed, as Robb fills the kettle with water and pulls down the tea bags. “I can’t believe you left me to deal with him alone. And now you’re asking if I want _tea?”_

“Don’t be such a baby.” Robb leans back against the counter and crosses his arms over his chest. “Jon’s not a drinker anyway.”

“Last night begs to differ,” Theon snaps. “You’re not the one who had to hold his hair out of his face while he threw up gallons of beer and tequila and gods know what else in the street outside Hank’s!”

From the look on Robb’s face, he hadn’t heard about that part. “Huh,” he says mildly. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, it was.” Theon hesitates, remembering the look on Jon’s face when he’d asked why he hated him, the plaintiveness of his voice. “It really, really was.”

Robb gives him a weird look before he turns around, looking for mugs now. While he’s doing that, Theon hears his bedroom door squeak open, followed by the sound of the bathroom door closing. By the time the kettle's switched off, Jon’s dragging himself into the kitchen, a pair of dark aviators perched on his nose and Theon’s comforter wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

“I see you’ve found my hangover glasses,” Theon remarks as Jon takes a seat at the table.

Jon nods sagely, face pale. “I took some more of your aspirin too. Thank you.” That last part is aimed at Robb, who has just set a steaming mug down in front of him.

“You’re welcome.” Robb takes the seat next to him, two more mugs in hand, and Theon joins them at the table. But instead of taking the seat on Robb’s other side like he normally would, he takes the other open seat next to Jon. Jon doesn’t seem to notice (too busy regretting every single decision that has led him to this moment, no doubt), but Robb raises an eyebrow as he slides the third mug down to him. “I hear you had an exciting night.”

“Can’t say,” Jon mumbles, dragging the sugar bowl towards him. “I don’t really remember.”

“Really? Not even ralphing your body weight in alcohol in the street outside Hank’s?”

Jon frowns, turning to look at Theon. He shrugs, as if to say, _no one told me it was a secret._ “Hm.” He lowers his head over the steaming mug, his hair flopping over into his face. “No, not really.”

“Incredible.” Robb sounds honestly delighted. “Well, shit, maybe—”

“Hey, lay off him a minute,” Theon breaks in. “Guy just woke up, let him take a breather before you start with 20 Questions.”

Robb cocks his head to the side, eyebrow still raised. Jon just takes a sip of his tea. Theon reaches over and rubs his shoulder. “You want breakfast?” he asks. “I think we have eggs.”

With those glasses on, Theon can’t read his expression. Still, that’s surprise in his voice when he says, “Yes, please. Thank you.”

“No problem.” He gets up from the table and does his best to ignore Robb, who’s turned the whole way around in his seat to watch him move around the kitchen and is probably shooting him, _What in seven hells happened here?_ looks.

Fifteen minutes later, over scrambled eggs and toast, Jon smiles at him. Theon smiles back.

Robb’s head probably explodes.


End file.
